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gingerbread

Gingerbread2012 (1)

Okay, I admit it, I like gingerbread, but gingerbread houses, in their many architectural forms from the Victorian type to the cookie and candy type, have never been my cup of tea.  This year, I came around to giving it a try to help contribute to making our local gingerbread festival become the largest in New England.   My first effort ever, so much to learn, thank you internet!  So much figuring, from the best recipe to use for the gingerbread, how much, how thick, how strong, the best royal icing – raw whites vs powdered whites vs meringue powder, what candy to use or make your own, create small paned windows? yikes! pedimented doorways? yikes; roof shingles – wheat thins, necco wafers, cereal – most won’t do for this simple house; what materials for  landscape, animals, snow…..Oh my goodness, really, it’s a full time job – if you wait until the last minute, which I did.  But if you start way before Thanksgiving, so you can take your time and be thoughtful with it, enjoy the process, I’m sure it can be fun.

It’s amazing how quickly the grocery store transforms from a food source into an architectural source for a miniature version of your home.  Your dry goods cupboards become filled with warning signs for the family – do not eat – this is not cereal, these are roof parts; these are not snacks, they are wagon wheels; this is not frosting – it is glue!  Someone did eat half the roof shingles for breakfast and I had to buy more.

Putting the whole thing together is as tiring as building a real house!  Melting candy for windows, measuring your house to scale so the proportions are correct, drawing & cutting it out for a pattern;  mixing the dough, or house walls, roof, chimneys, doors & doorways, etc. then building it, using only edible items, quite a challenge.  Then there’s the landscaping, and story to add.  Something needs to be going on to make it come alive.  But by the time you get to that part – especially when you’re in a hurry – you’re not feeling so alive!

I appreciate all the candy additions to other whimsical houses – hats off to you folks with your amazingly clever buildings & embellishments – but for this simple 17th- 18th century gingerbread house, those just won’t work.   More appropriate accoutrements had to be figured out.  Maybe it’s just me, spending so much time figuring out how to make snowmen without ready made products like marshmallows in a bag, or making a tree with chocolate from scratch, the birds, and a cat – with whiskers!  (that was a fun accidental discovery).

Besides the festive greenery, nothing looks and smells of Christmas more than a gingerbread house – so I just had to share this one – to prove that old houses without all that fancy gingerbread/candy – can still add to the spirit of the season, and look lovely.  Figuring all this stuff out was enormously challenging –  good for the brain.  Soon to be good for the stomach : )

Happy Holidays Everyone!

gingerbread2012 (3)Gingerbread2012 (2)Gingerbread2012

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old wood and wavy glass

warped doors and slanted floors, crooked walls and drafty sills – what’s not to love about an old house?  There are stories in all of them.  A love story etched into a pane of glass, a revolutionary war registered in a back room closet, a ferry ride long ago remembered on a beam.  All part of what make living in an old house an “experience,” a privilege – and an exercise in patience.  Real wood, real glass, real human hands have imperfectly shaped them for over two hundred years.  Ordinary lives like our own, who loved, lost, worked and prayed, have left a character and integrity lingering in the walls, a warm spirit in the patina.   I do hope the next generation will remain “real” enough to feel it.

I am reminded of these words by Margery Williams, “Velveteen Rabbit” author, about what it is to be “real.”  I do think that she was talking about an old house, and the people who love them.

“Real…doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse.  “You become.  It takes a long time.  That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept.  Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby.  But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

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New England Doorways

Doorways of Old Main Street

Who doesn’t love a beautiful doorway?  Here are twenty five historic doorways from lovely old Main Street, but they could be from almost any neighborhood in New England.  These entrances are on Connecticut River Valley homes spanning two centuries – 1698 to 1898 – and are available as 12 x 18 posters at only $20 a piece.  I put this together myself – from snapping the photos to learning some 21st century technology in the process – all for the benefit of the South Windsor Historical Society.  It was fun to do, and the end result is a wonderful piece to hang anywhere in your home.  It looks especially charming in a barn wood frame, and makes a great gift for the holidays.  To order a poster, send your check, made out to the South Windsor Historical Society, for $20 plus $5 for shipping, and mail to:

Restoring Home, PO Box 362, East Windsor Hill, CT 06028.

You can also email me at restoringhome [at] gmail [dot] com if you have any questions.

Have a wonderful holiday!

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October surprise

Deja vu all over again.  After a six month reprieve, it was back.  No one imagined a little snow would cause so much trouble.  We love our trees and hate to see them trimmed, but since it would take years and millions to put power, phone and cable wires underground,  we are going to have to shed some greenery to prevent another hardship like the one Alfred just handed us.  Of course, living in a colonial home – it shouldn’t have been a hardship.  It’s one thing to live in an antique house, and quite another to know how to use it!  There are fireplaces to warm us – just need to keep plenty of kindling, dry logs and matches on hand.  You can cook over them as well – with sturdy iron pots.  As to water, you need a shallow well and a good hand pump.  An outhouse would be nice.  A few chickens, maybe a pig… Let’s face it.  It can be done, but in the 21st century, we’re pretty wired up and dependent on electricity to make everything work.  And there’s the internet, communication, cordless phones, cell phones that need to be charged.  Thank goodness for cars and car chargers, their heat and their radio.  Thank goodness for those CL&P workers who did their darndest, night and day, to get us all hooked up again.  Now everything is back to normal.  Our week without left us with stories to tell, lessons learned, and for a lot of us – a new generator.

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galleting and sneck harling

So sorry to leave you at the “outhouse” for months (last post), but there’s been too much to do and see outdoors these days.  So here are some wonderful pictures of a recent visit to an early stone-ender in Lincoln, Rhode Island – the 1693 Arnold house.  And yes, galleting and sneck harling is real,  and what the Scots call their method of parging the stone end with lime-based mortar.  Some of us will miss seeing the lovely stones, but SPNEA, now Historic New England, decided after much research, that, as in Europe, this was the original treatment to stone ends to protect them from weather.  Here are two examples, one with, and one without, in the same town.  The one without, I believe, is a private residence – and they seem to be doing just fine, without.

Also, because the Arnold house is unfurnished, I was able to take a few interior shots.  Enjoy!

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Whitehall

While it’s the architecture that lures us to these houses in the first place, it’s discovering the unique  stories of the original builders that enliven the experience.  From heiress to sea captain, revolutionary soldier to merchant, post rider to pig farmer, all who had a hand in the birth and direction of this experiment, make every visit an adventure.  While the home of George Berkeley, 18th century theologian and philosopher, was not  open when we were there, it was still a treat to view the unique architecture outside, and impetus to discover the fascinating history of the man responsible for it.  A man after my own heart, in his love for art, philosophy and architecture.   One of the books in his vast library was by a British architect named Inigo Jones, who had studied the architecture of Palladio in Italy, a style that obviously struck a chord with everyone as it began to be reproduced in England and here in America in the 18th century.  George Berkeley thought it the perfect addition to his little cottage as well.   Only thing is, to achieve this double doorway on his center chimney house with tiny front hall, one door would have to be false.

I love knowing that someone of his substance was willing to sacrifice convenience for the sake of good design.  Good design is everything.  And he was willing to live with the minor annoyance that he would never be able to open the door on the left.   But it was worth it.  I imagine that every time he walked up that pathway his new doorway reminded him of his travels through Europe and the magnificent architecture he had witnessed there.  He must have been excited to bring it here to this new land.  Thank goodness he did.

Whitehall,  what once sat on a hundred acres, now sits on one.   That it exists at all is a miracle.  Divine intervention, perhaps, since its owner was a famous clergyman.  Dean George Berkeley was a minister, teacher, philosopher, one of the leading thinkers of his time, who counted among his friends Alexander Pope and  Jonathan Swift.  He was considered one of the big three 18th century philosophers with Locke and Hume.  His philosophical work Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge made him famous at home and abroad, he entered Newport in 1729 a celebrity.   He was attracted to Newport for its forward thinking and religious freedom.  Here he planned to establish a plantation, a home base, from which he could furnish crops and supplies for the college he planned to establish in Bermuda where the sons of the colonists would be trained to become clergymen.   The promised funds never materialized, and he would soon return to London, then to his native Ireland where he was appointed Bishop of Cloyne.

His influence in just three short years here, from 1729 to 1731, was grand.  Before he left he donated most of the thousand books he brought with him to Yale, the rest to Harvard.  The divinity school at Yale was named after him.  University of California Berkeley was also named after him, inspired by a line from one of his writings – “Westward the course of empire takes its way…”  He influenced King’s College (Columbia) and Brown University.  He helped found Newport’s Redwood Library and the Literary and Philosophical Society.  He donated his house and land to Yale, the proceeds were to fund scholarships for students studying Greek and Latin.  Now a scholar in residence spends a few weeks a year in the apartment upstairs – amidst the books and spirit of the great mind that once inhabited it – how glorious!

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February

It’s melting!  February is melting.  We stuck it out, through roof collapses, ice dams, wet ceilings, basements, hearths and dripping everywhere.  The sun is shining, for now, and the temps in the forties and fifties have us dreaming of Spring.   Of course, more snow is sure to come, with more frigid temps, but the respite is a welcome change and a reminder of the renewal ahead.  And not a minute too soon.

For those of us who were prepared for the worst – well insulated and weatherproofed, with freshly maintained windows, doors and roofs, all was probably well.  For the procrastinators, or the overwhelmed, like myself, all those repairs that were put off for tomorrow made nuisances of themselves today, and I can’t wait to address them!

The worst culprit was the ice dam.  If the wood shingles at the roof eaves are threadbare, with no overhang to protect the soffit, the ice will melt right behind it all – and woe is us. Water water everywhere.  Or the valley flashing that has a hole in it from the last time you tried to break up the ice there, or the roofing has failed around it, well, goodbye ceiling below.

There is something to be said for petroleum products used somewhere in the antique house.  I hate to admit it but that product called “ice and water” is certainly suited for the winter we just had.  Our wood roof did fine without it for thirty years, but enough is enough.  Thirty years!  Imagine?  A wood roof just starts to look really good after twenty five, ancient, but then the moss takes over and the edges get threadbare, and the rest of the story is a frozen sloppy mess.  Can’t put it off any longer, and we’re first on the list for roofing this Spring.

I must admit the roof held up well under five feet of snow.  There were no flat roofs on old houses, well at least not 17th & 18th century ones.  They were built to shed snow, water, critters, well maybe not critters. The only “critters” that cause a problem are carpenter bees.  They love the crown moulding under the eaves – I can see the holes in the crowns from here.  Again, that crown was replaced thirty years ago, so guess it’s time to replace that when we re-do the roof.  We have pine siding on the house and they don’t drill into that, but they do love the crown.  I see them in Spring, big fat bees high at the eaves, seeking out the best spot to drill into their new home, fending off others who stray into the area they’ve claimed.  As long as they don’t drill their way into our bedroom, I’m fine.  As long as they stay twenty feet away, I’m good.  But one does drill into the screen door by the garden.  Every day I notice the wood dust on the door sill.  Quite a cave he has there, cozy I imagine, convenient for the garden commute.

All else seems to have endured.  Surely, windows will need going over, repairing/replacing putty.  (see previous post on sash repair :)  A sunny Spring day will be perfect for that.  Woodpeckers, I just remembered woodpeckers.  They do love to peck on the house.  Surrounded by trees, they still feel the need to whack their heads against the house!  Hmmm, is that the reason some people put those tacky plastic squirrels on their house?  Never considered they might actually have a purpose.  Well, we just throw open the window and yell.

And of course there’s paint.  The best thing we ever didn’t do.  I can’t imagine having to paint the house every few years.  We left it natural, which works for a 17th century house, and just oil it now and then.  Mostly then – I think the last time was about ten years ago.  I don’t know how this house puts up with us!  I rationalize the neglect as character. It’s starting to look like one of those sepia photos of old houses shot in the 1880’s.  But it’s on the brink.  Looks best on the brink.  But it’s time to oil again, sand and paint trim, re-putty windows, re-fasten clapboards where nails have popped, caulk around windows and doors where needed, fix fences, and rake gardens.  Oh, I like that last one.  We’ve grinned and bore it all winter, with just a few more weeks to go, we’re chomping at the bit to have at it.  Soon we will.

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arizona anyone?

This is some January we’re having.   Usually this month is kind to us, more of an extended Autumn, but this one’s a doozy.   Every year, after twenty inches of snow, I ask myself why we do it, why do we stay? Why don’t we head south, or southwest, say to, Arizona?  Well the obvious answer, besides work, is that there aren’t any New England colonials there.   If those hearty souls – the early settlers – could stand it without plowed driveways and with only fireplaces for warmth, certainly we, with our electricity, central heating, down coats and comforters, can handle it.  Heck, they even had to trudge through snow to use the outhouse…

I have to say, after all the shoveling, the icy paths, and icicles clinging like crystal monster teeth from every eave – I don’t mind it!  I’m enjoying it.  The cool, crisp air is invigorating, the clean white snow creates a picturesque landscape, especially of colonial homes and open spaces.  Red barns and cardinals, picket and split rail fences, saltboxes and farmhouses, against yard high snowfall is the stuff of magazine covers.  Photographers like Ansel Adams  created masterpieces from these environs – but the right stuff had to be there for them.   Streets, farmlands and villages that have preserved their land, their history and architecture are the right stuff.  It’s the stuff that speaks to our inner sense of harmony, peace and balance.

That is why we don’t head south.  I think to embrace and fully enjoy the fruits of Winter’s labor enriches the soul, and makes one feel more deserving of the richness of Spring.  So for now, until the icicles melt, the paths clear, and the river swells from the north’s flood, we’ll persevere, hunker down by the hearth, count our blessings and our progress over these last few hundred years and, of course, keep shoveling – with a smile.

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and good will to men

This is one time of year that we take that old adage to heart – to light a candle rather than curse the darkness.  Homes everywhere this time of year are ablaze with them.  Candlelight shimmers from every window – small paned and large – homes are aglow.  It’s a beautiful sight.  One that not only evokes memories of a special season and holiday, but one that celebrates hope.  Hope, a light that is never quenched. A light that, no matter how weak the embers,  someone will always come along to stoke it back to life.  That is the message of the season, whether you are religious or not.  Christmas was not celebrated in colonial times, but their homes were brightly lit with candles, at all times.  What was once a necessity is now a charm, and a reminder  from the struggles of their past that with  perseverance, kindness and compassion, good will prevail.

During the recession of the 1930’s FDR provided hope for the unemployed with his New Deal.  Through the Works Progress Administration, millions were put to work.  Artists painted murals, engineers built bridges and roadways, architects and draftsmen documented American architecture.

I was looking for a book recently on Georgian architecture and pulled one off my shelf called Great Georgian Houses of America.  Usually I just flip through the pages looking for specific design elements and details, but this day I happened to notice the cover text above the title which read – “Architects’ Emergency Committee.”  What on earth was that?  The Preface explained all, and it was inspiring.  Thank goodness that these men were given this task, to give them a sense of dignity and hope during difficult times, and in return, they rekindled the hope that our most important American architecture would be preserved for the future.

I want to share with you the words that Mr. William Lawrence Bottomley, Editorial Committee Chairman, wrote in his Preface to Volume II of this Dover Publication.

“….The object in publishing these volumes was to give work to draughtsmen thrown out of employment in the recent difficult years and in so doing improving their morale, giving them training in an exact and serious technique and rendering financial aid.  It has been a great pleasure to this committee to see that many of these men joining in this work did so with great enthusiasm and to find that from being in a state of discouragement, with all its attendant ills, new courage, energy and happiness were the result.

This committee has made it a policy to give employment to all men making application irrespective of their experience in this type of drawing.  Many were well qualified and experienced while others needed much coaching.  While this training was valuable to all from the educational and technical points of view it was particularly useful to those whose training had been more on commercial and less on artistic lines.

In brief we wish to report that one hundred and ten different men have been given employment in the period from 1932 to 1937 and that this represents nineteen thousand, two hundred and one work hours during this time.  The first edition of two thousand volumes is almost exhausted and all the funds from these two volumes have been expended on this object without paying any profit or overhead outside of the actual costs of publishing and mailing….”

May we remember these old fashioned values during our own difficult times, and find ways to light candles, instill hope, and help others during this season, and beyond.   May hope, health and good will be with you over the Christmas holiday and throughout the new year.

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I could live like this

Rough Point

Have you visited Rough Point?  The home of Doris Duke, heiress to a fortune and colonial Newport’s most famous benefactor, sits at the end of that millionaire’s mile, Bellevue Avenue, overlooking the majesty of the Atlantic.  Rock cliffs, glistening waters, blue skies and gentle breezes are the backdrop for Frederick Law Olmstead’s landscape and the manorial home built for a Vanderbuilt.  Doris’ father purchased the home in 1922, renovated it, and died shortly after, leaving his estate and millions to his 12 year old daughter.  Since her mother, wealthy in her own right, would probably remarry, Doris’ father made sure his daughter was personally provided for, for life. Was she ever.  Despite having never attended college, she proved quite capable of managing her affairs, properties and fortune.

Her life story is the stuff of movies – from a failed first marriage to a failed but glamorous second –   she was a world traveler, collector, philanthropist.  Her summer home, Rough Point, was donated to the Newport Restoration Foundation in 1999, an organization she founded, and is open for tours in summer.  The tour is a walk through her story and history.  Her collections of art and antiques are placed artfully, and comfortably, throughout the home, the perfect background as the guide weaves you through the many rooms and stories of her life. From the drawing room to the solarium where Doris entertained locals like Jackie Kennedy, and enjoyed the company of her pets,  from a dozen rescued dogs to a few camels (yes camels!), every room in the house is both a surprise and a delight.

At first arrival, as you drive into the driveway to the parking area, you are greeted by two topiary camels.  They represent the real ones that once roamed the grounds, gifts from a Saudi billionaire.  As we parked, a couple was returning to their car next to us, both insisting adamantly that this was the best of all the mansions they’d visited.  We were excited to hear that.  While waiting for the tour to begin, we roamed the grounds.  Breathtaking.  The only negative for these mansion-owners is the Cliff Walk.  While great for the rest of us to be able to walk the entire point and share their grand views, it has always been an intrusion for the residents.  Somehow, they manage.

While other mansions can feel palatial and ostentatious, this one, despite its size, feels homey.  Perhaps because Ms. Duke actually used it regularly, up until her death in 1993.

Meanwhile, nearby Newport was crumbling.  The neighborhood around the working wharves had become a place that the well heeled would avoid.  Dickensian streets with crooked buildings and broken brick chimneys, stood in contrast to the  Gilded Age palaces.  Settled by Baptists, Portuguese Jews and Quakers – now there’s an exciting and unique history to explore – Newport was the first capitol of Rhode Island.  Its history is fascinating, from whaling port to pirates, marble mansions to Jack and Jackie, from decline to restoration, from colonial to palatial, this city’s diverse history can be read at every corner.   One could spend years discovering it – and it would be worth it.  And it is all thanks to Doris Duke’s vision to restore that city, house by crumbling house.  You can find all the info on Newport’s restoration at the Newport Restoration Foundation’s site, and in their book – Extraordinary Vision: Doris Duke and the Newport Restoration Foundation.

Put Rough Point on your list of places to visit next spring, and Hunter House, and have chowder at the Black Pearl on Bannister’s wharf, enjoy a harbor cruise in the afternoon, and dinner at the White Horse Tavern.   And if there’s room,  the Viking Hotel – it’ll be one terrific weekend!

Hunter House, Newport RI